Thursday, June 30, 2011

Superintendent Peter Gorman isn't making speeches or doing interviews, but he sent a farewell message to employees this afternoon, as he closes out his five years leading Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Here it is:

From: Peter C. Gorman

Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2011 1:20 PM

To: cmsmailall

Subject: Thank you and good-bye

Dear CMS employees,

Today is the last day I will lead CMS as superintendent. Hugh Hattabaugh begins as interim superintendent tomorrow and I will assist him in the transition and finish a few final projects between now and Aug. 1, when my employment with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools officially ends.

Each and every one of you has been part of the successes we have achieved. Those successes have been substantial. We have narrowed the achievement gap. We have raised achievement levels. We have nearly doubled the number of high-achieving schools. We have built a robust accountability structure. We decentralized CMS to make it more accessible to the community. We have turned around some of our lowest-performing schools with Strategic Staffing. We have brought substantial private investment – in money and in time – to CMS that has allowed us to broaden and enrich our curriculum and our initiatives. We have weathered the worst economic climate since the Great Depression. We had a successful bond request that allowed us to build some much-needed new schools. We have also closed some schools.

This is a very special district. CMS is blessed with so many assets – great teachers, skilled staff, a broad range of expertise in every area and a community that cares very much about its schools. Most important, it has you, the employees who come to work every day prepared to help our students learn and grow and succeed.

All of this has strengthened CMS and helped our students. None of it would have been possible without you. Thank you for the hard work, the trust you put in me as your superintendent and your willingness to persevere in good times and in bad. We’ve certainly had both.

I wish you all the best as you continue to make CMS the most innovative, effective public school district in the country. Thank you for everything you do.

Oh yes, I remember it now, when we got the whole community up in arms signing our first round for Deconsolidation and the Foundation for the Carolina's, the Chamber and the powerful downtown people got that Dog and Pony act of community focus meetings to stem the tide.

Then we got those districts with highly paid people over the areas which we have now.

Nothing changed and things just got worse.

Sorry if you want any points for that effort. The parade was already marching down the street and you and your group jumped in front and directed down the dead end side street.

But, like any worker you had some success and some failures, all the best in your future.

"Pete" is "Strategically Staffing" his schools BEFORE he leaves. He will be able to control his "kinderprincipals" from his new post. They owe him for fastracking their careers (and paying for their schooling)and now he owns them. That is what he means by a few final projsects. Check out all of the sneaky NEW administrative shifting going on.

The one who meant the most was Dr. Alexander Graham who brought structure.

Where does Pete Gorman fit-in?

While there are many who didn’t like the closing of 11 schools and didn’t like that the Central District became almost exclusively Title I, Dr. Gorman’s legacy is he finally got CMS over the hurdle of dealing with the “All due speed” hang-up of Brown. It’s something that few urban districts anywhere in the U.S. have done.

I found ludicrous the chants of “No justice. No Peace” from the local NAACP and at least found some appreciation of the national office of the NAACP when they told the local president to cool his jets. Rev. Nantambu should have set down with him often. Such discussions would have helped all of the student assignment and Magnet problems.

Contrary to some in the white community who said he spent too much money on the “lost cause” of west and center Charlotte, the proof that he served them well is two fold.

First and foremost he can take full responsibility for the passage of the 2007 school bond. He pushed the limits of the law to use every CMS resource to promote the need for new buildings. The victory gave Districts 1 and 6 the schools they needed.

Second, by following the recommendations of 2005 CMS Task Force, he let the community know that he was going to be the kind of leader that focused on what he had been asked to do. His first 100 days were the “Listening and Learning” tour. It worked well. My only regret is those same supporters he found in the first years didn’t exactly show the same strength of voice during the three bad budget years.

We will all wonder if Pay-for-Performance would have succeeded in a better economy. Unfortunately, the likelihood of better pay vanished quickly with Great Recession. For teachers, PfP came to mean someone on the 5th floor of the Government Center sticking pins in little teacher voodoo dolls. Teach for America replacements were seen as union busting scabs.

The way Gorman handled every declining budgets will benefit Charlotte leaders for years to come. His very public reverse engineering of the budgets let everyone see the dollars matched to operations.

He handled his boards well. He neither shied from Leake nor Gauvreau. The board was his employer but it always seemed the opposite. The good thing about that strange relationship was that it gave time for the bad blood between the boards and community to heal.

I became a supporter of Dr. Gorman but I remember thinking his Achievement Zone would be all smoke and mirrors and that it was really Achievement-less. I was wrong and to the great relieve of many, Judge Manning got off our backs for a while.

I wish Pete well in his new job. But I’d have rather seen him go to another school district. Somewhere in America is a school board in one of the large urban districts that is in real trouble. They could use a Pete Gorman.

I wonder how the 11 Garringer students who thought they were graduating feel about these zones, designed to ensure kids graduate.

One of the 11 was the valedictorian.

This new initiative will provide teachers with access to real-time student achievement data throughout the school year.

These Achievement Zones worked so well, they were assimilated into the learning communities?

As part of the budget reductions for fiscal year 2010-2011, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools announced a plan to reorganize the district’s learning communities into five zones instead of the current seven, and the Achievement Zone will be eliminated.

Another failed educrat, Dr. of so and so program like Bright Beginnings.

Happy 4th!! BTW the latest count of non Grads from Garinger HS is 13(THIRTEEN!!). Yep...Sneaky Petey kept this "transparent fact" out of the media. Mr Bolyn??? I held the highest integrity for you until you support a man with NO integrity. My respect for you and your opinions just washed down the drain. The end doesn't justify the means..especially when filled with deceit.